I was listening to a discussion about interdependence yesterday that got me intrigued. On one hand what I was hearing felt like it held some deep truths yet, on the face of it, seems in juxtaposition to the self-concept I hold of being independent. I love the kinds of challenges that expand and evolve my thoughts.

I have a friend who often calls my independent nature “the lone wolf”. She too was once a lone wolf, but circumstances have led to her relying on a bigger community of support than she might otherwise have sought.

While my desire for regular solitude, and repellant reaction to dependence, may seem like they add up a fierce independence, listening to this conversation about interdependence has now led me to conclude otherwise. The journey to me, my authentic self, has inevitably shifted me from independence to interdependence.

There is a part of me, for example, that thinks of myself as having ‘opted out’ of the kids’ school community, standing instead as the lone wolf. This is true on some levels; I have opted out of after-school activities, much of the socializing, and extra-curricular ‘volunteering’ for crafts and events. This, however, has more to do with the motives that previously drove me to participate, I had been putting my desire to ‘fit in’ and have others like me before my own health and wellbeing.

But now, from a place where I’ve put my own needs to function healthily first, I care more about the other members of the community. In fact I ‘see’ them more clearly now than I used to and am able to help in ways that benefit both me and them.

There was one mum that used to really trigger me emotionally. She is, in many respects, my very opposite – extremely active in the garden, kitchen and with outdoor activities generally. She is also a very active volunteer at the school, supporting crafting and events.

In the days when I used to feel ‘obliged’ to participate, she became a focal point of my subversive loathing.  Now that I have deliberately decoupled myself from the unhealthy desire to be liked for things I hate doing, my own needs are better met and I find myself much better able to perceive and acknowledge how she is really feeling – rather than try to create her as the villain in the scene who deserves whatever crappy thing is thrown her way.

And now, without the narrow focused lenses on, I can also see that – while in practice we may seem quite opposite in the things we enjoy doing – we clearly value many of the same things (like home-grown organic foods and sustainability). I recognise that much of her lifestyle – while perhaps not obviously of direct benefit to me – is lending to the creation of the kind of world I want to live in. That is pretty cool.

The premise of the discussion on interdependence that I was listening to, was– while many people have largely lost that ability to perceive not only how others feel, but often how we ourselves actually feel - we will need to, once again, become more emotionally intuitive in order for our race and the planet to thrive.

This makes sense from a spiritual perspective. If we all derive from - and are still connected to - the same source (a state of unity) then we are, effectively, already interconnected. None the less, as we invented things that created less physical reliance on our natural world and on each other, how other people were feeling became less important. People, like the planet’s resources, became commodities; objective rather than subjective. So our modern societies have evolved valuing intellect over intuition, independence over interdependence.

Just the other day my partner and I were discussing some trees that are growing on our property. There are two Phoenix Palms which were here when we bought the house a few years ago; planted on a verge that is possibly about 3 or 4 metres at the most from the house.

These trees were quite small when we arrived, but they have gotten rather large and can clump and grow up to 12 metres tall. Aside of the dangerous spikes that run along their leaf stalks, they are also extremely heavy trees as they hold a lot of water. So, should they ever fall, the house would most certainly be damaged.

There are quite a few trees on our property that were obviously not planted with their mature size in mind. I have found this to be quite common in the various places I’ve lived and visited. People seem to plant more with instant gratification in mind rather than the changing shape and form of their environment and the impacts of that, or plight of future residents or generations.

What is interesting about all of this is that the human intellect, by virtue of all its invention in the creation of independence, actually does care what people think but in a totally narcissistic and independent way. The intellect doesn’t care if the outcome is win-lose, so long as it is “I’ who wins.

This is in contrast to the more healthy approach of being aware of, and meeting, our own needs, which then allows us to help others in an interdependent way. This is an approach concerned with win-win.

We were born being able to decipher other’s moods and feelings, and because we were so reliant on our caretakers (usually parents) for our physical survival initially we had to care about how they felt. It’s because of this reliance on them emotionally and physically that we put so much faith in what they thought and believed, whether it resonated with us or not.

This is why we each ended up with so many layers of false beliefs about the world we were born into. This is how I came to hold a self concept, which perhaps many of you share, that it is more important to fit in than it is to even give my wellbeing a single thought.

To put our own wellbeing first is how each of us can begin on the road to interdependence. It is so much easier to love myself, and other people, regardless of where we each stand on this journey when I do it from a place of honouring my needs.

Interdependence is the mutual giving and receiving of things that are enjoyed and valued. If you find yourself feeling resentful in anything you are regularly doing for someone else, and vice versa, then you are not in an independent relationship with them, you are in a co-dependent relationship. Giving something of yourself when you don’t want to, especially if it receives no appreciation, is the road to ruin.

Interdependence doesn’t necessarily mean I do something for you, and you do something for me. It means we give and take based on what we feel good about giving.  There are times I find I’m in a position of giving more to certain people and receiving more from others.

For example, I have often looked after one of my daughter’s school friends because of her parents’ work schedule. It’s not that I love looking after kids as such, but this particular arrangement has suited us all well, my daughter and her friend play well together, so I feel it’s a win-win.

On the other hand, I can think of the many times a neighbor has helped me in times of need and – while we have been able to reciprocate on the odd occasion – the ‘receiving’ scales feel tipped in our favour; I just make sure to show my appreciation and help them when we can.

At the end of the day I can’t be everything to everyone and, even although in a survival situation I might get by without help from others, there are many things that others are much better at (and enjoy) than I am. And I feel able to receive these gifts from others much more freely than I did before I started to put my own wellbeing first.

It’s ironic, but being selfish is the road to our recovery. Interdependence is the ultimate healthy state of our society, but that begins with each of us accepting it as our own healthy state, and beginning to put our own wellbeing at the forefront of our actions. 

If what you read here resonates and you’d like a fresh perspective (and only that, it’s not advice you have to take or act upon) on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me or click here for further information. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Within each of us there are aspects of feminine and masculine, and what I’m about to share may initially sound somewhere between controversial at best and revolting at worst, but I think it is a bit of a litmus test that shows where we (as a society) are up to on this topic. It certainly revealed to me where I sat.

A while back a friend shared with me the idea that, instead of sanitary products, I should use a menstrual cup to collect blood and use it as a plant fertilizer. I think the phrase she used was “spray it around the house plants.”

My first reaction was “Eew!”

That was a reality check since blood is a common plant fertilizer, in fact a specially manufactured blood and bone mixture even sits in our garden shed as a standard stock item. So why was that my reaction to my own blood? Blood that is likely more healthful for my plants than that which we purchase.

Kate Morton sums it up quite well for me in one of her novels. There is a chapter where she recounts the memories of a 17-year-old girl on the beach with her family back in 1938. Her dad was trying to cajole her into a game of cricket on the beach and she didn’t want to play, so she said she had a headache coming on…

Headaches carried the whiff of ‘women’s business’ and Mr Smitham’s lips tightened with awe and distaste, He nodded, backing away slowly. ‘Rest up then, eh, don’t exert yourself-‘

This made me chuckle as it’s an attitude that most females today have experienced even if it is one they don’t carry themselves. I would have to be honest and admit it’s obviously become woven into the fabric of who I have become. Menstruation is a topic I’ve learned to discuss in hushed tones to a select few rather than revere it for its part in one of the most sacred and miraculous of all human creations – another human.

Despite a deliberate focus and journey to a more authentic me over the last few years, there are still so many of my beliefs about myself and the world that are left unchallenged and untouched, yet feeding into my life in ways unseen. Until someone challenges those beliefs…

I knew as soon as my friend suggested it we had unearthed a valuable insight; a real doozy actually.

This one lies at the door of the patriarchal age, a topic that I’m going to open up a bit more and explore. What is the patriarchy? Why am I seeing it referred to more and more often? Is this a women’s lib thing? Yes and no, it’s so much more, because it’s about all of us.

A patriarchy is a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it. Our societies have predominantly been patriarchal for thousands of years and it’s only now, having seen a huge rise in civil liberties for all in the last few decades, we are starting to uncover what that means for all of us.

While we are not yet where we need to be in terms of honouring each individual on this planet, we are shifting across the precipice of awareness. Having suppressed many of the feminine aspects in all of us, and having overplayed others for millenia, we are where we are, as I discussed in Porn – Good or Bad earlier in the year.

Back in the 1990’s I found it fascinating to read iconic books like: Men Are from Mars, Women are from Venus, by John Gray; His Needs Her Needs by Willard F Hartley; and, Why Men Don’t Listen and Women can’t read maps by Allan and Barbara Pease. It brought out the often unspoken different interests and priorities of men and women. 

However, as it turns out, these were not definitive guides to the roles and needs of men and women, more a marker of a point in time; the beginnings of awareness.

Donna Eden and Davis Feinstein talk about how the landscape between men and women is changing in their book, the Energies of Love. Looking at America through the eyes of historians and sociologists  gives us all some useful insights. Here are three eras they have defined in relation to marriage, a microcosm of the male-female dynamic:

• For the settlers there, until about 1850, affection and emotional intimacy were secondary to the basics of physical survival, such as food, shelter and protection.
• From 1850 to the mid-1960’s love, intimacy and a fulfilling sex life rose in importance within the dominant model of marriage. In 1939 when women were asked to rank eighteen qualities they’d want in a future husband, love was ranked fifth – economic support was still considered more important. By the 1950’s surveys revealed love to be climbing up the list.
• In the current era however, love has – to a great degree – become the mutual exploration of our infinitely rich, complex and exciting selves. The ability of a marriage to support each partner’s personal evolution has emerged as a pivotal dimension of marital satisfaction. 

Now, more than ever, the speed of change is accelerating. I have mentioned before the recent Australian drama, Puberty Blues, where actors played their teenage counterparts from the 1970’s and were asked to compare teenagers then to teenagers now. Being my own era as a child, I was very interested in their responses.

It was somewhat comforting to me to hear of the rise of what had traditionally been more feminine qualities within the males and vice versa. The girls today danced to the beat of their own drum, rather than swoon and do what the boys wanted of them. The boys were much more affectionate with each other, and there was less bravado. This is a changing landscape indeed.

It seems, more than any other, it is the emotional landscape that is changing, for both men and women alike. Emotions and intuition have been suppressed and pitched as weaknesses or even witchcraft for thousands of years.  I was just musing that the word ‘hunch’ probably came about in an attempt to masculinise and thus accept this most fundamental of human gifts.

It is this very talent for understanding how we feel about anything and everything and using it as a guide to our best life that holds the key to a more evolved, personally purposeful and fulfilling future.

While I’m not one for sensationalism or conspiracy theories in general, in fact I tend not to engage in any form of media, it does makes rational sense to me that the quashing of the more feminine traits was no accident, as it is the seat of true power. Instead the alluring power of ego has been played to and, as a result, the world is in a lesser state for it.

There is a theory that I rather like, that this has its roots in the priests of the ancient Egyptian civilizations (in a bid to outwit their creator) who became the puppeteers behind the pharaohs. I would suggest that even the most aware and idealistic of today’s world leaders find themselves to be largely puppets in their seat of power.

Regardless of the theories and the history, what I do know today is that my true power lies in my inner ability to know my own truths and to create the kind of world I want to live in.

I’ve become so attuned to my inner world that I forget there were days when I didn’t even know whether I was more naturally inclined to rational or intuitive thought. My ability to rationalise things always led others to conclude the former, but when I read Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking it gave me insight into and confidence in my ‘knowing’.

I suspect my ability to rationalise stems from having to defend and explain my ‘knowing’ to those around me as I grew up, rationalsing is really the process of bringing into conscious awareness what the broader part of you already intuitively knows.

But if you have to relearn how to listen to your intuition, there are some great pointers out there. I particularly like Sonia Choquette’s exercises that help with this, she has written many books and, most recently, did an online course on Your 3 Best Superpowers: Imagination, Meditation and Intuition.   

Our power is not ‘out there’ in the having, our power is ‘in here’ in the being. Learning to listen to that inner voice may be considered a feminine trait, but it’s one that we all have regardless of our gender. Learning to listen to that voice, and to discern whether the thoughts and beliefs of the mind-led you are serving you, is what we must learn to embrace in order to live our best life and evolve our world.

Learning to embrace and honour that which is uniquely feminine, well, that will come too. In light of such a swathe of conscious awareness, and in embracing the feminine aspects within all of us, how can it not?

If what you read here resonates and you’d like a fresh perspective (and only that, it’s not advice you have to take or act upon) on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me or click here for further information. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.
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A few years ago now as I was walking around my old neighbourhood, a deeply profound thought struck me:

The closer anything is to its natural state the better it is for us.

Food has become an issue for me. Not because I’m concerned about my weight particularly, though I am overweight according to my Body Mass Index (BMI) and have been for years. For those who don’t know, your BMI is a measure of body fat based on your weight in relation to your height, you can easily Google BMI calculators to work it out.

My issue is more about how I’m feeling; I can just tell the food I’m eating doesn’t resonate with me anymore. As I’ve gone on this journey to a more authentic me, the food I used to enjoy is less and less appealing. After I eat I feel bloated and sluggish, and generally yuck.

A while back I showed my kids a fun video about the digestive system and how our bodies function at optimal health when our internal environment is slightly alkaline. It’s a basic truth I’d learned about our physiology years ago.

We then watched a video about acid and alkaline (or base) foods. We made two big charts, one for acids, one for alkalines, and cut out heaps of pictures of the foods that we eat before sticking them to their relevant chart. 

That was a visual wake up call, with about 80-90% of what we eat being acid inducing food. It’s almost the exact opposite of what a healthy balance would look like. Not surprisingly, if I were to eat a variety of whole foods in their natural state, the balance would be totally reversed and support my natural physiology.

I then bought a book that appealed for some recipe ideas, called Vegge Mama, since my kids eat practically no vegetables and my partner and I are just sick of the ‘same old’ meals. The authors, Doreen Virtue and Jenny Ross, share their food stories at the beginning; Doreen’s father has been a vegetarian since childhood and her mother was a food counselor; Jenny doesn’t say what her childhood diet was like, just that a health crisis about 20 years ago led her to a plant-based raw food diet and then to becoming a raw food chef.

The foods look good, but it’s overwhelming. There are a whole bunch of ingredients I’ve never heard of and, by the time I tried to figure out if that is because it’s an American word for something I do know (like cilantro instead of coriander, or zucchini instead of courgette) or whether it’s just something new to me entirely, my willpower to do something different had waned.

My childhood diet was typical West of Scotland fare. Dinner was meat, potatoes and two veg; breakfast and lunch were usually some form of wheat with some form of dairy; and these were supplemented with snacks of seasonal fruit, bread (with butter and jam) and – if we were lucky – home baking consisting of some combination of refined flour and sugar. Treats were anything fried, , sugar (cooked, baked and boiled in its many guises) and a can of diet Irn Bru (a lurid orange-coloured fizzy concoction sworn to get rid of a hangover).

Cholesterol became a thing in the 1980’s, and so we ditched the more natural butter in favour of foul margarine. Then McDonald’s came on the scene, followed by a whole raft of other fast food choices to complement the kebab shops and Chinese and Indian take-out restaurants.

As life has progressed, many of these elements have remained in my diet. When I became an adult and moved away from home, I learned how to cook many more pasta and rice dishes to add variety to the potato and veg kind. But I soon discovered that very little of these foods are actually helping my body, most of what I’ve eaten for most of my life is highly processed or mono-farmed; far from its optimal natural state.

That is annoying, I feel myself taking a deep sigh as I’m not really a lover of cooking. It’s a means to an end for me, and not something I wanted to have to entirely relearn, changing all my shopping and cooking habits feels like a huge deal.

Hence there are only three times in my life I’ve ‘been on a diet’. The first was when I became housebound for months in my early twenties, undiagnosed with a debilitating lethargy. This was in the days before the internet, so I was reliant on bemused doctors, magazines and library books.

My research, such that it was, led me to the early discussions about Candida Albicans and yeast overgrowth, and I embarked on an anti-candida diet. That was no mean feat in those days, especially given the social context (it was seen as highly controversial and ‘alternative’), and ingredients were hard to come by.

Eventually I was diagnosed with panic disorder and generalized anxiety, so my focus shifted more to ‘mind over matter’, but I had learned a lot about food groups and their effect on human physiology in the process.

The second and third diets that I have ever embarked on were both in an attempt to conceive. After four failed pregnancies, by the time I reached my late thirties I had again begun to look more broadly at my health. Much of what I read reminded me of what I’d learned back in my early twenties. In the intervening years, candida overgrowth (synonymous with internal inflammation in the mucous membranes and resulting health issues) had become a more widely recognised and less contentious issue.

I was drawn to a book by Dee McCaffrey about flourless and sugarless living, and was astounded by her knowledge and experience around this issue. Recently I was reminded of it again when I saw an online course being offered by Susan Peirce Thompson, who has spent years studying the psychology and neuroscience behind addiction when it comes to these foods. Refined sugar and flour are as addictive as cocaine and heroin and block our body’s natural ability to know when it is full.

So it was no surprise to me when a naturopath looked me in the eye and told me “no self respecting fetus wants to come into a gloopy environment”. He may not have used those exact words, but I heard what he was saying and I got it. Both times I switched to a more natural alkalizing diet and I was pregnant within a month, and both resulted in healthy babies.

Of course, in the months and years that followed, with breastfeeding and a family and house to look after as well as a full time senior corporate role to hold down, I reverted back to my old habits. This is an aspect that Susan Peirce Thompson deals with head on – willpower. Her philosophy is to draw a line and make no exceptions for unhealthy food choices, as you would for anything else addictive.

I understand this and the science behind it, and in situations that are ‘acute’ or pressing, I have proven myself capable. Whereas right now, this dis-ease with my health is more chronic, making it feel less pressing.

I know that is not cool, I know that ignoring all the small signs and symptoms only leads to larger issues down the line.

The question is how to tackle it. I know anything that feels like ‘effort’ can negate whatever I am trying to achieve. So how do I go about creating more healthy habits in a way that feels easier?

From a metaphysical perspective, I’ve found discussions about food and energy from the likes of Anthony William and Teal Swan extremely interesting.  Many intuitives often ‘see’ the energy that flows in and around us, including our food, whereas most of us generally only feel it.

The concept of eating food that is alive and full of life energy seems so much more appealing than food that is, for want of a better word, dead.

While I’d easily find food full of kilojoules in a supermarket, I would struggle to find anything with much life energy. Teal’s run down of foods that are worst for us (in order, everything from sugar substitutes and pesticides to dairy and meat) resonated with everything else I’ve heard and read; you can hear this on her You Tube channel.

Vladimir Megre’s Ringing Cedar series also has some fantastic information about our optimal diet and lifestyle, and how to go about tackling it.

I know my ideal end goal is to eat fresh foods I pick from my garden, foods grown with love and in a more healthy (for the plant and therefore me) companion-plant mix. Not the best news when neither cooking nor gardening is really my thing, the kids are fairly picky eaters and my partner is bound and determined to stick with gluten and meat.

So it was of some relief to be reminded, when listening to one of Teal’s videos, that as I follow my path of authenticity I’ll be naturally inspired towards the types of foods that are healthier for me. All I need do is work my way into this incrementally.

That hit home. The ‘all or nothing’ is too much for me right now, too big a leap to make in one swoop. I have to break this down. I decided that each week, when I order the shopping, I’d choose one new recipe to prepare. That way we can try new things, incorporating the ones we like into my new repertoire, which can slowly build up over the coming months and years.

My rule of thumb is that it has to be natural, tasty and easy.

Simultaneously the garden has become my domain. My partner, who has tended to take a lead in the past, is just too busy this Spring to plant up and look after the vegetables (yes it’s Spring here in the Southern hemisphere). So the kids and I have chosen some of the basics and will use some of our time at the weekends to start growing what we need.

While I’m hoping that will inspire them to make more healthy food choices, I recognise this is about what I’m feeling the intuitive nudge to address. Right now they seem more enamored with everything I’ve come to dislike. I trust, in time, they will follow their own intuition around this issue. In the meantime they will find more healthful choices available to them around the home.

Whether you feel a critical need to urgently look at your food choices, or whether this is something that has been grumbling along in the background, only you can determine. The key thing though is to get your head around it. To work out what beliefs you have that are fear based, versus what your body is telling you about your diet.

You won’t choose lettuce and carrots for dinner and suddenly find the path of enlightenment. However the reverse can be true, so trust your inner knowing on this issue. Listen to your body and you’ll discover the foods that will support you in living your best life.

If what you read here resonates and you’d like a fresh perspective (and only that, it’s not advice you have to take or act upon) on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me or click here for further information. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

While something remains safely tucked out of sight in my inner world, no one can poke fun and burst my bubble. It also means I feel no obligation to follow through. It’s safe, it’s just a dream.

But bring it out in the open and I know I will feel both vulnerable and compelled, compelled to somehow prove myself right.

I’ve often said I’m a bit envious of people who have always known their calling, as I sat around waiting on the thunderbolt. I’ve written articles about just following the yellow brick road, taking the next inspired step. And I stand by every word.

Yet, in the process of doing just that, I feel like the thunderbolt has suddenly and unexpectedly hit. I always thought I’d just keep following the yellow brick road and then, one day, I’d look back and it would seem so obvious. In a way, that is what has happened. I’m not ‘there’, I haven’t realised my dream, far from it, but I have clarity and can be more focused in pursuing it now.

As Henry David Thoreau said “I learned this, at least by experiment, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.”

And, as the cliché goes, it starts with a dream.

The thunderbolt came as it dawned on me that I do know where I’m headed. There were two things that I realised this week, two little ‘ah ha’ moments. The first is that I always have an opinion. You could ask me anything, literally, and it will always evoke a response in me. I now understand that is not what happens for everyone.

Ironically enough, it was my mum who used to always say “Shona knows everything” in a sarcastic tone (parents of most teenagers will know what I mean). I say ironically as I’m sure this trait of always having an opinion was inherited from mum. I remember years ago thinking I’d put together a book of mum’s opinions one day, it might be titled “Dog’s are Dirty” as she used to always comment “dog’s sniff bottoms and poo, then they come and lick your face.”

It makes me chuckle, even now.  Suffice to say, we never had dog in our house.

My opinions aren’t so much like that, they’re not fixed – quite the opposite in fact, my opinions are always evolving as I’m growing and learning. But, they arise in response to everything I hear none the less. When I say it invokes a response, sometimes it can be a slow burn, like when I was 18 years old and my boyfriend’s father (a physicist) said “how many dimensions do you think there are Shona?”

It’s a good question, he knew of ten for sure, which kind of blew my mind back then in the early 1990’s. Now I think there may be an infinite number of dimensions.

But I guess it’s why I’ve been so drawn to openly offer my perspective to people; you tell me your problems, I’ll have a response.

That said, it has taken years to get to a point of putting that out there. This is a good thing, for it is only now my perspective comes through a more authentic self who knows that it is not my opinion that counts, only whether it inspires something within you – because it is your opinion that counts when it comes to your life.

In the past, I may have been too attached to my opinion, too identified with it, for it to be given or received in an open way; in a way in where it could help point to your own inner truths and power.

The second thing to dawn this week is related to my dream of speaking to an audience. It’s something I’ve talked about now and then, but only having this vague sense of it as a possibility in the future.

The ‘ah ha’ moment came in the realization that it’s something I’m well prepared for, and that it could marry quite nicely with offering up my opinion to others who might have questions; a live interactive sort of a thing, perhaps starting in small groups.

Other than a momentary wobble in having to deliver a speech as a self-conscious spotty teenager in English Class, I’ve never really had qualms about my voice having an audience. As captain of the swim team, I used to lead the club chant to rally everyone at the start of a competition. One of the parents asked mum “What do you feed her? Raw Meat?”

As part of my postgraduate diploma I studied training delivery, which I then went on to do at various points in my corporate career. In my twenties I spent many years attending seminars where I’d listen and watch as successful business people and authors of self development and motivational books shared their stories and insights on stage.

All the while I’d be observing and critiquing their style, imagining how I would do it, inspired by their stories. I was learning and absorbing many details about the way a person would hold and project themselves from a stage, the dynamics and techniques that were powerful and those materials, colours and styles of dress that worked aesthetically.

I managed to get in some practice during my corporate life; designing and delivering leadership training, talking at corporate functions and even at several conferences (after winning some national awards in customer experience strategy many years ago).

But it has taken a while to get to a point of confidence about my latest subject matter, or the fact I even have one. It’s definitely grounded in personal change and transformation, but occasionally I project that out into visions of a more evolved world, or the more metaphysical aspects of our human potential.

I was just sharing this week that it took me 3 years of publishing my own blog to get comfortable enough to submit anything to a larger platform - Tiny Buddha. Meaning comfortable enough with my writing style, expertise and content that I wouldn’t feel dead in the water when an article got rejected, which is an inevitability.

I come from a background where people have ‘real jobs’, where pursuing a more creative career is so foreign that many of my loved ones are still waiting for me to ‘get back to the real world.’ But I haven’t been trying to figure out the next thing that will make me money, I’ve been trying to figure out the thing that I feel planted here on Earth to do, to be; the thing that will make my heart soar.

And of all the things I’ve learned in the last few years I’d have to say that the most important thing I’ve discovered is that we each have our own answers within us. To live that discovery to its fullest potential, and to help others to do the same, that feels important.

To be successful at anything, there are likely to be more rejections along the way or, more appropriately, re-directions as Dr Steve Maraboli says. To get to a point of delivering my perspective on a stage, interacting with an audience, there will be many moments to come that I can’t even fathom right now.

Of course I know of many routes that can lead there, but none of those have yet struck me as being on my yellow brick road. In fact, I have no idea what the next step even is, but I know I’ll be awake to the next intuitive nudge, serendipity or insight that gives me a clue.

Right now I’m just basking in this current step. A step from the mists of my imagination into words shared, a small step in the direction of realizing my dream, but a much larger step for the more vulnerable me inside.

But it was time, I could feel it.

Before I wrote this article, I had been talking about my dreams with someone I trust and respect. I said “If I were taking my own advice on this one, I'd say I know I will never be given a dream that is beyond my reach, follow the intuitive nudges and seek those who support your vision.”

So what about you? What is floating in your imagination that you have not yet spoken aloud? Listen to your inner voice, is it time to take a step forwards? I’d say that is very likely if you were drawn to this article.

Who do you know who could support your vision? If you are lucky there will be people in your life who will support you and believe in you. If not, you should seek them out. It’s not uncommon to face this situation, for our current lives are a reflection of yesterday’s dreams, and the players reflect that.

​Take a deep breath and a small step; go boldly in the direction of your dreams.

If what you read here resonates and you’d like a fresh perspective (and only that, it’s not advice you have to take or act upon) on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me or click here for further information. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I vividly remember, back in my corporate days, a chiropractor asking me details about the symptoms I was having in my neck and back and when those symptoms were at their worst. I had no idea. I was so distracted and busy most of the time, I was only aware of the tension in a generalised area.

I remember the relationships that ended, with little awareness of the patterns of feelings and behaviours that point to a time long before the relationship began, rather than being ‘a fault’ of the person I was with. It took many repetitions of things unwanted before I finally looked in my own mirror to address what was going on.

This is the result of a past where, probably like most of you, I was taught to suppress how I feel. It set me up for a lifetime of guilt, frustration, resentment, anger, disappointment and, most importantly, a lack of self-awareness – until I became aware of it.

Today, if my neck or back is tense, I can pin down which vertebrae the pain stems from, which side I feel it on, where it then tracks throughout my body and when it feels worse or better. Today, whether things are going badly or well, the first place I usually look is in the mirror. Today I am more aware than ever of how my feelings and corresponding thoughts shape my life.

I was listening to Teal Swan talk about emotions; she was asserting that the most pervasive – and damaging – form of abuse is emotional.  And it’s not necessarily the type of abuse you might be thinking of, like emotional blackmail for example, it’s the chronic everyday abuse that occurs from having to suppress our emotions.

A typical example she gave of how this arises was of a child having a hissy fit over a candy bar that the parent had said “no” to at the store. Generally you might hear the parent telling the child how inappropriate their response is, especially since they may only have just eaten a candy bar.

Yet it’s that very act, of deeming any emotion as appropriate or inappropriate, good or bad, which is damaging. She wasn’t suggesting that the parent give in and get the candy bar, just that they acknowledge the emotion (maybe something like “I can understand how you must feel, at my age I’d probably have wanted the candy bar as badly as you do and I’d be feeling powerless and angry too.”)

It is about feeling the emotion rather than suppressing it.

This isn’t about parenting, although that is important, it’s about you and I; the inner child within us that experienced these scenarios. It is about recognizing the damage it caused to us, and creating awareness of the root of our self doubts, anxieties, fears, neurosis and even illness.

Let’s face it, I feel the way I feel, there is no conscious decision in that initial emotion, it just is what it is. By making certain emotions ‘bad’ it creates guilt. Worse, if it becomes about me, rather than just the way I’m feeling or acting, it creates shame. Shame is an emotion that is possibly the most harmful of all.
 
In the vast majority of cases much of the suppression of our emotions has come from well meaning people, our parents, who wanted to teach us how to fit in to our society. For thousands of years, displaying emotions has been seen as a weakness, yet we feel them in response to everything we are experiencing, including each thought and even in response to the energy of others’ emotions around us.

As pointed to by Donna Eden and David Feinstein in their book The Energies of Love, the electromagnetic field of the heart (which has sixty times the amplitude of the brain’s field) extends a number of feet beyond each of us, radiating in all directions. This field can transmit emotions.

As Donna and David discovered, the electromagnetic signals produced by your heart are registered in the brains of people around you. If two people are within conversational distance, fluctuations in the heart signal of one correspond with fluctuations in the brainwaves of the other.

Harold Burr, a neuroanatomist in the 1930’s, was the first to demonstrate each living thing is born with a completely unique energy structure that determines its physical growth through the electrical fields that surround it and electrical impulses that move through it. Burr was also able to distinguish electrical patterns that corresponded with health and illness.

In recent decades, more books have appeared that link symptoms of the varying illnesses we experience to very specific thought patterns stemming from the suppression of varying emotions.  My personal favourite is Lise Bourbeau’s book Your Body’s Telling You: Love Yourself.

For example, the common cold – symptomatic of congestion in your body – corresponds to the ‘congested’ thoughts in our head and feeling overwhelmed; trying to do too much at once or over-thinking things. But even the more serious and more deadly of illnesses has a corresponding emotional and thought pattern.

The ridiculous thing is that we are just beginning to open up to the enormously important role our emotions play in our life experiences. It is not yet common to encounter a medical practitioner who will take this approach with patients, which is far more relevant and helpful to a full recovery than anything else.

In fact, it is not yet common to find anyone in any traditional position of authority – be it a teacher in the classroom, or a policeman, a judge, or the politician making the laws, to understand the role emotions play, and the damage their suppression causes. To many this still sounds hocus.

This stems from millennia of patriarchal societies which have been rapidly eroding in recent decades as feminine traits are becoming more valued and empowered globally. The old systems are still hanging on in there, just. I suspect I will see many more changes in my own lifetime as the speed of change increases, I know I certainly hold a vision for a more evolved world than this one.

I believe that starts with each of us becoming consciously aware of what we are thinking and how we are feeling more of the time. Our emotions are our connection with our inner knowing, our intuition. This is a vital connection to living our best life, to the source of our internal power. This is connection we want thriving, not suppressed.

Consider this, can you imagine living your life free of guilt? Can you imagine living your life from the standpoint of fully loving and accepting who you are? Can you imagine living your life in a way that allows you to look at the challenges more objectively, as a jumping off point to grow from?

Can you imagine fully experiencing your impulses and intuition rather than having only a vague awareness of something more that only manages to surface now and then?

And consider this, can you imagine a world in which more and more people are acting from this point of being more consciously aware of what they think and feel? And more loving and accepting of themselves?

It starts with you, becoming more consciously aware of who you are, the patterns of thoughts and emotions you have, and taking control of them. It is not a quick process, but you can get small, immediate results by just opening up to the possibility and pursuing this in whatever way works for you.

For me, it has been a combined process of meditating regularly, to be able to start being the observer of my thoughts and feelings rather than wholly identifying with them, together with reading, listening and watching things that inspire and challenge me – and trying things that might facilitate more speedy awareness and release of unwanted patterns, like guided meditations, tapping and the whole world of healing that exists when I started to open up to it.

I invite you to get to know yourself in this way and look forward to the results it creates for all of us.

If what you read here resonates you may enjoy reading Meditation – the Cornerstone to Your Success. If you’d like a fresh perspective (and only that, it’s not advice you have to take or act upon) on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me or click here for further information. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.